Numerous pieces of equipment in an aircraft are subjected to high levels of stress by their surroundings: temperature, pressure, vibration, impacts, electromagnetic disturbances, etc.
Most pieces of aircraft equipment are monitored permanently by sensors that measure parameters representative of the states of those pieces of equipment for the purposes firstly of detecting the occurrence of a fault or a failure, and secondly of detecting abnormal variations of a parameter in order to anticipate such a failure or such a fault.
Nevertheless, certain pieces of equipment, such as engine nacelles, for example, are not fitted with such sensors (or are only partially fitted therewith), since integrating such sensors raises a certain number of difficulties.
Unfortunately, engine nacelles are highly stressed during certain stages of flight. In particular, a nacelle is subjected to large variations in temperature and levels of vibration during stages of the aircraft taking off and climbing, and to large variations of pressure during stages of the aircraft descending, approaching, and landing. These temperatures, vibrations, and pressures stress the nacelle, accelerate its aging, and can lead to mechanical faults in the structure of the nacelle.
At present, such mechanical faults are detected by visual inspections during maintenance operations. Nevertheless, between visual inspections, one or more mechanical faults may appear or may become worse. The state of the nacelle then needs the nacelle either to be subjected to major repair or else to be replaced.
Naturally, proposals have been made to fit a nacelle with temperature, acceleration, and pressure sensors in order to detect and anticipate better the appearance of such mechanical faults, and in order to understand better the origin and the causes of such mechanical faults occurring. Nevertheless, integrating such sensors in the nacelle, and more particularly connecting them to the avionics network have been judged to be too complex to undertaken.